Can salaried employees be forced to attend meetings without being able to charge the time?

Question

Background: I work in Maryland

I am a salaried employee; however, I am required to fill out a time card in order to specify which hours are worked on which contract, and am required to work a minimum of 40 hours a week. Recently, we had a mandatory company wide meeting over lunch, that covered some internal company training. When I ask for a charge code to charge for the meeting, I was told that it was a "Lunch and Learn", and that no charge code would be provided, effectively forcing me to work extra time in order to meet the minimum required hours.

I found the following on the Maryland department of labors website on a article about compensable time:

Trainings and Meetings: Generally, an employee must be paid for training time and meetings -- whether held during regular work hours or not -- if attendance at a training or meeting is required and not "voluntary". Trainings and meetings are not "voluntary" if it is generally known, or the employee reasonably believes, that non-attendance will result in some negative effect on employment.

My question is does the fact that I am salaried mean that this above statement does not apply or is it illegal for my employer to not provide a charge code in order to cover the mandatory lunch meeting?

Answer 1

Salaried employees who are exempt from overtime laws under the Fair Labor Standards Act and parallel Maryland laws do not have to be further compensated for any particular work activity including a company meeting.

Not all salaried employees, however, are exempt from overtime laws under the FLSA and parallel state overtime laws. Basically, salaried employees who are not exempt who work more than 40 hours a week (calculated in a very specific way), are entitled to 1.5/40 times their weekly salary of addition compensation per overtime hour worked.

Mandatory employee meetings count as working hours that count towards the 40 hours of non-overtime work per week for these employees.

Given that the employee is required to keep track of the employee's hours, it is likely that the employee is a non-exempt salaried worker, although this is only circumstantial evidence. The employee's company might be tracking exempt salaried worker's hours for other purposes such as for internal bonus and productivity evaluations that don't relate to overtime requirements.

There are several categories of workers who are exempt from overtime laws and it is a highly fact intensive inquiry.

The question does not provide enough information to determine whether or not the employee is exempt from overtime laws. Resources to determine how an employee should be classified can be found, for example, from the U.S. Labor Department's website. Most exempt employees fall into one of five categories:

1. administrative employees,
2. computer employees,
3. executives,
4. outside sales personnel, and
5. professional employees.

Different legal standards apply to determine if employees fall into any on of these five categories.